Book review

The Fall of the GDR: Germany's Road to Unity

Jan Palmowski

Department of German, King's College London

In The Fall
of the GDR, David Childs considers the collapse of the GDR
up to unification. He begins by discussing the leadership structure
of the GDR, and notes in particular the relative longevity and
the geriatric age structure of the Politbureau in the
1980s. This is complemented by a discussion of the administrative
structure of the state, its mass organisations, and the potential
for opposition in the mid-1980s.

If the first chapter has set the scene for the impending collapse
of the GDR, the second chapter presents an overview over the
history of the GDR. The author emphasises in particular the structural
deficits that burdened the state. These deficits were compounded
by the economic policies of the communist regime. As a result,
the GDR was forced, in 1983 and 1984, to accept massive loans
to keep the whole state afloat. This section then lists other
elements in the state's 'Flawed Development':
its inadequate housing stock, and the lack of a separate GDR
identity and the failure to develop one in the face of the glamorous
and evidently more consumerist Federal Republic. These factors
can be taken as reasons why, according to studies conducted by
the Central Institute for Research on Youth, by May 1988 only
28 per cent of young people asked identified themselves as proud
citizens of the GDR. Those who were left identifying with the
state were primarily those bound together by a 'community
of fate' (p. 34), those who had descended from Weimar Communists,
and those whose loyalty earned them good jobs.

The third chapter discusses the Stasi, its historical evolution
and its position in the machinery of the state. Interestingly,
Child goes into detail here, through individual cases such as
Klaus Gysi (former Minister of Culture and Secretary of Church
Affairs and father of a current Senator of the State of Berlin),
and through the cases of victims like Robert Havemann and Wolfgang
Biermann. The author then goes on to note the extraordinary lengths
to which the Stasi went, to create an intelligence network that
had made plans for every eventuality. This is quite proper, because
many accounts of that period tend to pass over the real danger
faced by the protestors in the late summer of 1989.

The following chapter engages with the transformation of the
external context in which GDR leaders operated. It begins by
discussing the advent of Gorbachev as party leader in the Soviet
Union, moves on to discuss the political transformations that
led to the destruction of the fence between Hungary and Austria,
and finally charts the events in Poland. It is perhaps a little
odd that to this are added accounts of the revolutions in Prague
and Romania, which are then followed by the revolt of Tiananmen
Square in China. Prague and Budapest came after the fall of the
Berlin Wall, while their impact on the dissolution of the GDR
is debatable. If these events are considered for a general overview
of what happened in Eastern Europe, then adding Tiananmen Square
at the end of this is bizarre. These are minor question marks
that simply highlight a bigger problem of the book, which is
that its structure is not always clear.

The following chapter contains a chronological account of the
events of 1989 leading up to the celebrations of the fortieth
anniversary of the GDR. It notes the growing rumblings of protest
in the early months of 1989 leading up to the electoral fraud
committed at the local elections of 1989. It rightly emphasises
the astonishing inability of the GDR's gerontocracy to respond
to the growing discontent in its fixation to celebrate the country's
fortieth anniversary. This is essentially a narrative chapter,
but no less important for that. Timing was everything in a drama
that included the exit of East Germans via Hungary and Prague,
the fortieth anniversary celebrations and the demonstrations
leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Following a very brief chapter on the nascence of the New Forum
and other opposition groups, the next chapter looks in considerable
detail (given the length of the book) at the GDR under the leadership
of Egon Krenz. Krenz and Modrow came between the fall of Honecker
and the first democratic elections in March 1990. Consequently,
many narratives relegate them to the sidelines. For this reason,
the re-evaluation of the role of Krenz is important. At the same
time, Childs makes clear that, by this point, events had developed
their own dynamic and were pretty much beyond central party control.
The 4 November demonstration in East Berlin, which attracted
up to one million people, and the en masse resignation of the
Politbureau on 8 November indicate the impotence of the ruling
authorities.

This is followed by a consideration of the international events
surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, and demonstrates quite
clearly the genuine surprise of the leading politicians in Paris,
London and the Soviet Union. It also highlights the dramatic
levels of political improvisation performed, as leaders who could
not see unification as a realistic prospect had reversed their
opinions within months.

The next chapter examines the period of the Modrow government,
its negotiations with the evolving political groups in the GDR,
and the run-up to the GDR's first free elections in March
1990. It also charts the growing dismantling of the barriers
between East and West Germany, especially in Berlin. The next
chapter discusses the March 1990 elections in greater detail.
It considers the programmes of the individual parties, and looks
at why the Alliance for Germany, which largely consisted of the
CDU, turned out to be so successful.

The final chapter takes the reader from March 1990 to the realization
of German unity on 3 October 1990. There is some welcome detail
here about nature and composition of the first and last freely
elected People's Chamber of the GDR, but otherwise there
is a fast-paced account of the domestic German and international
negotiations that surrounded unification.

Before evaluating the book, it is worth considering its ambition.
It is clearly not a monograph, but it is not a straightforward
textbook either. The write-up at the back summarises the book's
character well: 'It greatly benefits from the author's
decades of involvement with East Germany, including personal
friendships there, and his eye-witness account of many of the
events during 1989'. Any doubts about this are dispelled
in the preface, in which Childs ponders his own experience in
the GDR, the events leading up to his 'highly successful'
book, The GDR: Moscow's German Ally (1983), and his accurate predictions during
the 1980s that the end of the GDR was not far off (pp. xii&nd
xiii).
In other words, the author is never very far from the story he
tells. This is the book's strength, but it is also at the
root of its weaknesses.

Among the strengths are some of the idiosyncrasies that one
would not have expected in a book of this kind. On a number of
occasions, there is clearly an urge to tell it 'as it really
was'. This makes the book readable, it varies the pace of
the narrative, and it will benefit readers who know very little
about the GDR. The rather long passage about the ossification
of the leadership, for instance, or the detail Childs provides
about how a vote was actually cast in the GDR before 1990, is
the kind of detail which is often lost in other books of this
kind. In other words, the reader gets a very different 'feel'
for the GDR here, compared to other books of this length. As
mentioned earlier, it is also interesting to have a relatively
substantial section on the leadership of Krenz and Modrow, including
an assessment of their personal leadership styles.

At times, the urge to give the reader an impression of what
it was like in the GDR may go a little far. The events leading
up to the fall of the Wall in 1989 are introduced by a long passage
in which Childs muses about what the workers must have thought
in January 1989 on their way to work. As they took the 'S-Bahn'
to work, they 'probably' day-dreamed about their summer
vacations, and whether they would be lucky enough to go to Romania
that summer (p. 64). The passage goes on in this style, and emphasises
both how remote the events of November 1989 were from a perspective
of early 1989, and it re-emphasises the fact that workers could
not go to Greece or Spain.

Whether such conjecture belongs into a history book is a matter
of opinion. It can be explained, of course, by the nature of
the book as a personal-cum-historical reflection. At times, however,
this goes too far. When the Brandenburg Gate was formally opened
on 22 December 1989, Childs noted that the East German border
guards were 'dazed by the dream-like quality of the event.
The more thoughtful of them must have realised that their days
were numbered' (p. 110). This is not merely conjecture,
it is also misleading. The role of the border guards was subject
to intense internal discussion when Hungary opened its border.
Its future was cast in doubt, privately and openly, from 9 November
at the latest. The whole point of the border guards, whose mission
had been to protect the inviolability of the GDR border, was
undermined at precisely the moment when the border between the
two Germanies had become porous.

The imaginary anecdotal style may break up the narrative, but
it is problematic as such. When discussing the resignations of
the old guard from the Volkskammer (parliament), Childs
concludes: 'The remaining leaders must have asked themselves,
"Where will it all end? Will I be on the next list of those to
be expelled and arrested?"' This is the kind of sentence
one dreads finding in undergraduate essays, but with authors
using this style it is increasingly difficult to blame the students
for this.

There are a number of evaluations here that are striking. Krenz
gets a rather positive write-up (pp. 47–8, 73, 89). Although
he has been burdened by his hard-line reputation, and was limited
by his own lack of vision, he should, as the author concludes,
be given credit for the peaceful transitions that took place
under his brief reign (p. 90). This is an interesting argument,
but it is at this point that it becomes difficult for the reader
to distinguish between the account of Childs the historian and
Childs the involved spectator. In this case, it is not clear
whether this evaluation is based on the author's own favourable
personal impressions of his conversations with Krenz, or whether
this is based on hard evidence.

Hans Momper, the mayor of West Berlin, also gets a good write-up
in these pages. Once again, this is surprising. Momper famously
missed the public mood when he welcomed the East Germans to West
Berlin as the 'people (Volk) of the GDR'. Despite
being the mayor of unification in Berlin, Momper actually managed
to lose the 1990 state elections: quite an achievement, especially
given the addition of a naturally left-leaning voting public
to the franchise. Once again, therefore, it is not quite clear
where this positive assessment of Momper is coming from (p. 89).

A final sphere where the personal might have taken over unduly
is the importance accorded to meetings and statements made by
visitors to Nottingham University (pp. 92, 148, 149). Visits
by Margaret Thatcher or the GDR ambassador there were undoubtedly
important events, but it is not clear that they belong to a brief
account of the fall of the GDR. They do underline the author's
first-hand involvement with his subject matter, however, so that
once again it is difficult to decide whether these are strengths
or weaknesses of the book.

There is a final comment to be made about the overall argument
of this book. There is none. There is no overarching thesis,
no engagement with particular historiographical debates. It starts
with the military band goose-stepping its way past the GDR leaders
on 7 October 1988 (p. 1), and ends with the elections of late
1990 (this is discounting a final paragraph on 'United Germany
in 2000'). The author clearly has not intended to place
this book into a historiographical context. Once again, if this
is in part a personal account, this was arguably not necessary.
This book, then, makes a contribution to our knowledge of the
GDR because of the author's own experience, and not by the
way in which he seeks to refine existing historiographical debates.
The book will appeal particularly to those who do not have any
first-hand knowledge of the GDR, and who are less interested
in the historical debates surrounding it.